Want to conserve energy? Start at home.

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My ongoing quest to lessen my impact on the environment one small change at a time has never hit closer to home than it did two weeks ago when I had an energy audit done by a contractor working for Xcel Energy. The prognosis on my 10-year-old, two-story house indicated that my home is a leaky, energy gobbling monster that needs to go on a low-carbon diet!

Xcel and the Colorado Public Utilities Commission launched the Home Energy Audit program in 2008 as part of a multi-prong attack to cope with rising natural gas and electricity prices. To try to persuade more customers to participate, Xcel is covering 60 percent of the price of the audit. The balance shows up on the customer’s bill as a one-line charge item after the audit is completed.

Research indicates that homeowners who do an energy audit and then make the suggested home improvements save as much as 50 percent or more on their monthly energy bill.

“In the long run, paying for those audits is cheaper than it is to build new power plants to keep rates lower,” says Bruce Peterson, Xcel’s product portfolio manager and home energy audit guru.

There are three kinds of home energy audits.

The first, a standard audit including a carbon monoxide test, is $60.

The second includes those services, plus a blower door air leakage test, for $90. The blower door test is used to measure the air leakage of the home, or how much convective heat is lost or gained depending on the season.

The third type of audit includes an infrared camera scan for $120. The scan reveals red hot spots and cool blues where energy is being lost.

I wanted comprehensive tests done on my house — instead of concentrating on a single component such as windows — so I opted for the third audit. Because in any house, the various components interact with one another and with the residents. If I change just one part of the house, all of the other parts are effected and must also be adjusted to maintain the same energy usage. Plus, a comprehensive audit tells homeowners where to get started with their home improvements.

Here’s a hint: Look for spider webs. If you find them, you know that’s an area where air is leaking in and out of the house, because spiders were able to shimmy through a crack or crevice from the outside.

“Windows get a bad rap,” Peterson said, “but replacing them is often not the first or the wisest place a person should spend their money.”

Xcel sent Francisco Reina of Lightly Treading to do my audit. He’s that company’s RESNET energy rater, which means he’s been through an accredited training program to do home energy audits. The audit usually takes less than two hours, but my brain was fried when it was done. Still, as a first time homeowner, I got more out of the audit than just the details of my energy usage.

Reina tirelessly walked me through all the major systems in my house, showing me where my insulation is (or isn’t, in some cases), explaining how to set up my programmable thermostat, and talking about easy fixes I could tackle myself. His report prioritizes the projects I should handle first for the greatest impact on my natural gas and electricity usage. If I make all of the home improvements suggested in the audit, I could get an estimated $855 in rebates from Xcel.

Here’s the lowdown: Front Range homes the size of mine (2,500 square feet) typically use 70 Therms of natural gas and 635 kilowatts of electricity per month. My home uses as much as 848 kilowatts of electricity (in July) and 131 Therms of gas (in December).

Reina gave me this list of prioritized recommendations, plus the estimated cost of improvements, along with how much I would likely save once I make these improvements.

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1. Use power strips. This will cut the electricity flowing to unused electronics and appliances. Reina said this equipment is still using energy even when it’s turned off. To prove it, he showed me what a “ghost load” looks like. In an infrared photo, it is visible as hot area around my TV, laptop and desktop computer. The only way to stop that lost energy is to unplug the appliances and turn them off. And the most convenient way to do that is with a power strip.

2) Shorten the dryer hose. Reina applauded the fact that I often use dryer racks instead of the dryer, but he was dismayed to discover that my dryer hose wasn’t even connected to the vent, creating a major fire hazard. The disconnected dryer hose also adds excessive moisture to my basement — the very area where you want the least moisture.

3) Install fabric thermal window treatments, exterior solar shades or retractable awnings. These will help cool down my south-facing bedroom windows. An aftermarket, low-e hard coat also can be applied to the windows to reduce summer heat gain. And I need to start replacing my light bulbs with compact florescent bulbs.

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4) Extinguish the standing pilot on my fireplace. This one really blew my mind. That thing has been running non-stop since I bought the house in 2004. Like most homeowners, according to Reina, I had no idea it needed to be turned off. This alone could have saved me nearly $100 a year on my energy bill. “Think about how much harder your air conditioning had to work to cool this area where that standing pilot was pumping out heat,” Reina said.

5) Wrap my water heater and pipes. This is an easy fix I can do myself. Turns out my furnace filter wasn’t properly installed either. Plus, the air conditioner pan also appeared to be plugged up and condensation was leaking from it into the furnace.

6) Air seal the home. Especially around windows and doors, large cracks or holes in the caulking are a problem.

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7) Insulate cantilevers and the garage floor. A cantilever is a structural element in a home that is completely fixed at one end to the main structure and completely free at the other end, such as balconies and bay windows. Insulation needs to be added to the floor above the garage to reduce convective air currents and add improved insulation performance to a typically and historically deficient area. One of my guest bedrooms had 2×10 floor joists with no insulation at all! In the kitchen, a large bay window had little to no insulation either. The only way to fix this is to hire a professional to drill a hole in the wall and blow in cellulose to pack insulation in those areas, creating an air barrier.

And that’s not all. Reina’s infrared camera showed that I was losing heat in my living room with a leaky bottom wall plate, in my bedroom attic knee wall where there was no insulation at all, in my attic access, in the soffit vent in my master bedroom, in the top wall plates in my master bathroom, in the rim of my mechanical room, and in the soffit ceiling of the garage. My ducts are leaking, too.

There was one piece of good news. Reina said my home’s previous owner had already updated my attic insulation, adding about 16 extra inches of blown fiberglass to bring it up to a level of R-40. He suggested I add an extra 4 inches of blown cellulose, which would bump me up to an R-50 for greater comfort and performance.

The estimated costs for these improvements: up to $2,300.

The estimated energy savings: at least $650 per year.

The total rebates available for these improvements: up to $855. That could make my final investment more like $1450. Sounds like a deal to me.

“I believe if all the improvements are performed, (those savings) will arrive at a much higher figure,” Reina added.

Now I know how and where my home is consuming too much energy. But Xcel wants to make sure that customers like me take the next step and fix their problem areas. To make that process easier, the company created the Home Performance with Energy Star program, which includes a list of approved contractors that will use the energy audit program to complete the improvements needed. Afterwards, a private auditor will inspect the work and make sure it was done properly.

“In addition to the list of contractors, we talk about rebates on qualified improvements, equipment and appliances and provide you with cash back to help buy down the cost of what we are recommending,” Peterson said. “After the work has been done, Home Performance will send out the inspector and we will collect receipts for work you’ve paid for. We fill out the (rebate) applications for you and send them into Xcel so you don’t have to do anything.”

Finally, here are the basic steps to a more energy-efficient home using this Xcel program:

1) Sign up for Home Performance with ENERGY STAR program. Call Xcel Energy at 800-895-4999 or xcelenergy.com/residential and click on Programs & Resource. Choose Home Energy Audit or Home Performance with ENERGY STAR. If you haven’t already had an audit, an agent will help you get one.

Good advice. A good Home Performance contractor is the way to go. But regardless, keep a couple things in mind.

Regarding the home energy audit, it’s important to get the right audit–accurate and actionable and looking at the right things like duct leakage, air infiltration, and equipment efficiency and safety and an analysis of utility bills. For a bit more background on audits and additional links, follow my post at http://greenhomesamerica.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/home-energy-audits-2/